Debugging build with gmake, running npm toolchain

[Willem Jan Withagen]

On 13-2-2020 15:20, Stefan Bethke wrote:
>
>> Am 13.02.2020 um 14:42 schrieb Marcin Cieslak <saper at saper.info>:
>>
>> On Wed, 12 Feb 2020, Stefan Bethke wrote:
>>
>>> The second issue is that npm install is invoked, which will most likely prevent the port to be built as a package. Is there a way to handle the download of the package-lock.json dependencies in the fetch stage?
>> I have some hack in my private node-sass port: https://github.com/saper/ports-exp/tree/master/textproc/node-sass
>>
>> jrm@ has solved this in the late net-im/mastodon port by simply putting all JavaScript together
>> in one tarball: https://svnweb.freebsd.org/ports/head/net-im/mastodon/?pathrev=472547
>>
>> https://ftfl.ca/blog/2017-05-23-mastodon-freebsd.html
>>
>> The port got removed in https://svnweb.freebsd.org/ports?view=revision&revision=474751 <https://svnweb.freebsd.org/ports?view=revision&revision=474751>
> Thanks for the pointers!
>
> I'm currently trying to convince upstream to package the dependencies as vendor-like archives (for both Go modules and npms) and deploy them alongside the source release archive. That would allow me to treat these as additional distfiles, and simply unpack them into $WRKSRC.
>
> I'm hoping that this would make the maintenance of the port halfway reasonable.

I have the same issue in my ceph ports, where the dashboard is build 
using npm.

Tarring up the result and download that during the fetch phase is one of 
the solutions that was offered to me as well.
But then I am responsible for maintaining again another set of data to 
keep updated.
Another disadvantage of tarring is that that adds another dependency for 
the maintainer to keep.
Note that updating the tar, will require updating the port to fix the 
checksum.
(unless one really hardcore manually fetches the tar in post_fetch, 
without caring about integrity)

For now it have chosen for the following, easy way out:
     - require npm as runtime dependency
     - include the build list/json config in the package
     - explain in pkg-message how to actual let the user do it by 
him/herself.

The disadvantage of this is a large wagonload of node packages that gets 
downloaded in the code cache.
Something that is not an issue when tarring up the actual code for the 
dashboard.

--WjW